"It's no longer possible to write a single app that takes advantage of the full range of Mac OS X features. Some APIs only work inside the Mac App Store. Others only work outside it. Presumably, this gap will widen as more new features are App Store-exclusive, while sandboxing places greater restrictions on what App Store apps are allowed to do." Anybody surprised by this, here's the clue stick. Please proceed to hit yourself with it.

I like Apple's design and the Mac OS X architecture, but somehow I am quite happy to be a Windows/UNIX user.

We as users need to make enough pressure so that other vendors do not follow Apple's footsteps.

I imagine that Apple's dreamworld is similar to what Games Console developers enjoy. Where every single application has to go through a certification process, after being able to get an approval from the console vendor.

MS already announced a similar position. Windows 8 Metro applications will be available only through the app store, and cannot be installed by way of untrusted third parties.

Yup, sadly MS is heading down the same path - although, it might be that you can still install Metro applications outside of the store if you so desire (like you will be able to with legacy applications). Not sure though.

MS already announced a similar position. Windows 8 Metro applications will be available only through the app store, and cannot be installed by way of untrusted third parties.

I heard that that was just for ARM client Win8, not for x86. Win8 ARM reportedly doesn't let you run non-Metro apps (because they aren't including the desktop interface at all), and as a separate constraint doesn't let you sideload apps from places other than its app store.

On Win8 client for x86 they are including the desktop interface and letting you run apps for it, and are letting you install apps from other locations. They haven't said one way or another whether Metro will run unsigned apps, or whether you will be able to provide signed apps from other places like you can now.

On Win8 server, x86 or not, they haven't said anything about this subject at all. There's a good chance that Win8 server won't get Metro at all, only desktop and the CLI. They certainly will allow at least self-signed apps because most business software is written in-house.

I imagine that Apple's dreamworld is similar to what Games Console developers enjoy. Where every single application has to go through a certification process, after being able to get an approval from the console vendor.

That's not the point of the change. The point is that they want control over the APIs that are being used. They want to be able to deprecate Carbon and UNIX APIs in favor of Cocoa. They want people to use ONLY the new APIs that are 99% share-able with iOS and that are not difficult to maintain in the following years.

Microsoft's difficulty is that their APIs are 20 years old and they can't clean up their act.

I like the idea to keep the APIs used to only the newer ones. That means that apps are written better and the OS is legacy free.

The APIs that are App Store only are App Store related so those don't really count.

"I imagine that Apple's dreamworld is similar to what Games Console developers enjoy. Where every single application has to go through a certification process, after being able to get an approval from the console vendor.

That's not the point of the change. The point is that they want control over the APIs that are being used. They want to be able to deprecate Carbon and UNIX APIs in favor of Cocoa. They want people to use ONLY the new APIs that are 99% share-able with iOS and that are not difficult to maintain in the following years.
"

There are other ways of doing it, like when they dropped support for Carbon in Lion.

Microsoft's difficulty is that their APIs are 20 years old and they can't clean up their act.

I like the idea to keep the APIs used to only the newer ones. That means that apps are written better and the OS is legacy free.

Microsoft is cleaning up their act with the new WinRT APIs in Win8. Metro apps will only have limited access to legacy APIs, only the safe ones. No matter how Metro apps are written - native, .NET, Silverlight, HTML/JS - they will all use the same WinRT code, perhaps with idiomatic wrapper APIs but the same code.

I haven't heard one way or the other whether Win8 desktop apps can use WinRT yet, as the non-UI APIs should apply to desktop apps too. That would be nice to see, and a desktop-usable subset of WinRT might be portable to Win7 as well.

I like the idea to keep the APIs used to only the newer ones. That means that apps are written better and the OS is legacy free.

But also that older applications won't work any longer, so I'm not sure this would be such a good idea.

Maybe this won't seem a big deal to people used to the $0.99 apps, but other people have made quite an investment in software, you know? Not to mention that some applications are no longer maintained and won't receive an update -- and can't be easily replaced anyway.

That's not the point of the change. The point is that they want control over the APIs that are being used.

Hahahahaha
You actually believe this

They obviously want to have tight quality control over applications. The downside is that developers freedom is considerably reduced.
I don't really mind though, as long as apple doesn't do all it can to make itself impossible to avoid the way microsoft did.

I like the idea to keep the APIs used to only the newer ones. That means that apps are written better and the OS is legacy free.

The other side of that coin is an endless treadmill of buying new software when the API Gods deem the next set of culling necessary. Plus accepting that persons other than you decide what is possible when and where on a device you own and not you yourself.